Pfaff: Proposal to arm teachers sends wrong message; mental health funding a better answer to school safety question

INDIANAPOLIS – State Rep. Tonya Pfaff (D-Terre Haute) voted against legislation to enable teachers to carry guns into the classroom, saying the bill sends the wrong message at a time when lawmakers should be moving to improve mental health and other safety services in schools.

During debate on House Bill 1253, Pfaff said the measure could cause a number of safety concerns that would create greater problems.

“I worry about teachers getting overpowered and their weapons stolen,” Pfaff said. “I worry about the psychological damage that a teacher shooting a student would do to the teacher and the students. I worry about the message that we are sending to our young, impressionable minds that violence is the answer.”

While she has no problem with citizens legally owning guns, Pfaff said she doubted that the answer to a threat caused by a gun in a school would be more guns in schools.

“Our trained police officers and public safety officers should be the ones trained and armed to keep teachers and students safe in our schools,” Pfaff said. “They are the professionals. As teachers, we need to get out of the way when there is a threat and let law enforcement and public safety do what they have spent years training to do.

“We would not expect our police officers to teach algebra,” she added. “That is not what they have spent their careers training to do. We should not expect or want our teachers with a little bit of training to be the front line of defense in our classrooms.

“Teachers just want to teach, so let us teach,” Pfaff concluded.

Through the 2019 session, Pfaff has played a key role in attempting to focus the school safety debate on strengthening mental health services.

She was successful in passing an amendment to House Bill 1004 that would allow school corporations to use money from the Secured School Fund for school-based mental health services for students. A second proposal that was voted down by the House majority would have enabled more school districts to apply for grants through the Secured School Fund.

“I wish we would spend more time debating how improving mental health services could provide better answers for school safety than simply inserting more guns into the situation,” Pfaff said. “House Bill 1253 uses money from the Safe School Fund to pay for the plan to arm teachers. Wouldn’t that money be better spent on providing services from trained mental health professionals? Wouldn’t it be better to have a system in place that anticipates problems rather than implementing a plan that has a great potential to make things worse?

“These are the issues we should be debating, and I intend to make sure we do that through the rest of this session,” she said.